Our spies went to the opening last night of the 21st Annual Last Remaining Seats screening series hosted by The LA Conservancy at the recently renovated Orpheum Theater and served up this dish:

Hitchcock's North by Northwest was the film and the event opened (looking like a glam premiere of old with klieg lights torching the sky) with a Q&A from L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson with Hitch's daughter Patricia and NXNW's still-beautiful-49-years-later-star Eva Marie Saint. They regaled the conservative-looking L.A. Conservancy crowd stories of Hitchcock and how he directed.

"He was an amazing director visually, sketching each scene before it was shot," Hanson said.

"He was a brilliant director who never gave direction about how to act, but he gave incredible external directions about what you're wearing and how you would hold yourself," remembered Marie Saint.

"He worked very closely with my mother, who was a film editor before she met my father. Most people don't know this, but he didn't take a step without consulting my mother," daughter Pat Hitchcock recalled.

The screening, which opened with an oddball Psycho-satire short of Hitchcock describing how messy the blood scenes were, was great watch on the big screen. The colors were vibrant and the scenes spectacular, especially the Plaza Hotel, the Indiana cornfields and the Mt. Rushmore models.

The film was a hoot to see again and I was lucky enough to bring my friend's 11-year-old daughter Hopi, who only had one thing say: "The line was so funny when the two of them were hanging from the cliff and he says, 'My two wives both left me because they thought my life was too dull.'"

The up coming film in the series is Roman Holiday, slated to screen on May 30, 2007 at The Los Angeles Theater in downtown LA. But we can't wait for the June 27 screening of Scarface, because when the lights go down at the Alex Theater in Glendale and the 1932 original rolls on the screen, the gangstas in the audience are going to be pissed.